Water hazard
When it comes to what some refer to as the sport of golf, Feedback is unsure whether we land in the bunker of it being a good walk spoiled or, as G. K. Chesterton saw it, an expensive way of playing marbles.
News of an innovative way to enliven the game comes courtesy of a Facebook post from the Royal Port Moresby Golf Club in Papua New Guinea – an outfit of such grand venerability that the hole-by-hole course description on its website , New South Wales.
Advertisement
“Members, please be aware that our water holes 15, 16 and 17 have been repopulated with crocodiles”, it states. “The crocs will take some time to get used to their new home, so please be mindful when playing these holes and take extra precautions when walking in the rough.” That’s one way to encourage an accurate tee shot.
Faster than a speeding…
An Olympic games where records have tumbled on track and field has drawn to a close (see page 25). But we can still celebrate The Wall Street Journal‘s intriguing description of volleyball player Wilfredo León having performed, in May, “one of the fastest serves in the history of the game at 84.3 miles per hour – faster than a blimp’s maximum speed”.
We associate blimps with rather more stately progress. Ralf Ludwig of Melbourne Beach in Florida displays the true spirit of the 91av reader by not allowing this to go over his head. While the highest speed accredited by the World Air Sports Federation to an airship is Steve Fossett and Hans-Paul Ströhle’s 115 kilometres per hour (71.5 mph) in 2004, he discovers, the large rigid airships of the 1920s and 1930s reached speeds of up to 140 km/h or 87 mph. “So I guess it should read: ‘faster than a blimp’s official maximum speed’,” he concludes.
Unfuzzy logic
“Time for a new credit card? There’s no need to wait,” bubbles a blurb that plunges with less warning than an Olympic diver into our email inpool. It informs us of a website where we can “QuickCheck” our eligibility in just 60 seconds. “That’s a guaranteed yes or no,” it enthuses.
Rather than a blank stare, a sad, slow intake of breath or an attempt to change the subject to more mutually satisfying topics? We’d buy that. We’re unsure, however, whether a computer algorithm that restricts itself to binary logic is really a statement of customer focus or just a reflection of what remains the state of the art.
What would a quantum computer’s fuzzy logic deliver, we wonder? A guaranteed yes and no would be more fun, for a certain, undefined, value of fun.
Ele-photo lens
Lest anyone think we’re down on AI, our large, flappy ears are always receptive to new, unexpected and pleasing uses for the technology. Thanks, then, to Alan Wells of Saltdean, UK, for drawing our attention to the Zoological Society of London’s project, in tandem with conservation technology outfit Arribada Initiative, to create a .
Training the system has involved taking at Whipsnade and Colchester zoos in the UK, with the aim of developing a system that can automatically alert communities to impending pachyderms at night, and so reduce human-elephant conflicts.
A mammoth task. Given the number of meetings they seem to crop up in, too, we also personally look forward to any system that can tell us indisputably whether there’s an elephant in the room.
Ain’t half raining
Howard Clase directs us to the Canadian government’s for his neck of the woods, St John’s in Newfoundland. A footnote expands on the table heading “Likelihood of precip”: “Likelihood of Precipitation as described in the public forecast as a chance of measurable precipitation for a period of time”. It further expands on its categories: “Nil: 0%. Low: 40% or below. Medium: 60% or 70%. High: Above 70%”.
We’ve never had the pleasure of Newfoundland, but our impression through film and story is that it’s the sort of place where it is either raining very hard, or it isn’t. But still, Howard, on a purely intellectual level, we find your enquiry as to what happened to the percentages between 40 and 59 justified. The answer you got back from the relevant authorities, that such percentages are “meaningless”, is worthy of expansion. Should anyone have insights into whether this is a peculiarly meteorological or a peculiarly Canadian phenomenon, or whether there is a hole in statistics we should all be worried about, do please get in touch.
A question of degree
Still, we admire the lack of nuance in Canadian weather forecasts when compared with those from the BBC. These indulge in a strange but booming obsession with really rather small variations in weather conditions by providing an hour-by-hour percentage likelihood of rain that can take any integer value from 0 to 100. Many’s the time we’ve hung indecisively with our brolly by the stationery cupboard door, wondering whether to go for it at 23 per cent or wait another 20 minutes for a 21 per cent. They must be using a quantum computer.
Got a story for Feedback?
You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.